


wake up, beauty, you’re not the beast

by melonpaan



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Canon divergence after 4x20, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 04:31:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14866658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melonpaan/pseuds/melonpaan
Summary: Blair doesn’t believe in fairytales anymore.





	wake up, beauty, you’re not the beast

If this were a fairytale she would be left with a dainty cut on her cheek, a single blemish on which she could weigh the entire darkness of her soul, an imperfection she could conceal with a bit of makeup. But reality crashes around her like an entire window of brittle glass, cold and unfeeling.  
  
Nate runs after her just like she always wanted, once upon a time, but he is no longer her Prince Charming or White Knight so she runs and runs until her head spins and her legs give out and darkness claims her whole.  
  
She doesn’t make it home at midnight.   
  
She’s missing a shoe the next morning. Both shoes. And her dress. She hasn’t slept in anything other than silk since she was five and already feels hives spreading from the thin cotton hospital gown touching her skin. Dorota sleeps fitfully on a tacky paisley bedside chair, Blair’s dress folded neatly in her arms. Blair thinks she ought to make a fuss about her lack of proper sleeping attire and a hospital bed that can never be sterilized of all traces of sickly humanity, but when she opens her mouth her jaw locks and her head burns and she thinks it can wait until she wakes because she hopes,  _she hopes_ , this is another one of her maudlin dreams and when she really opens her eyes she will be exactly where she thinks she should be.  
  
When she stirs later, Dorota greets her with an “Oh, Miss Blair!” and she is  _still_  in a pox laden cotton gown in a common hospital bed, but there are men in crisp white shirts and black ties laying out a full brunch from The Lion and Blair can’t seem to find it in her heart to complain. She’ll blame the painkillers later.  
  
Serena and Nate visit while she’s pathetically trying to spoon Greek yogurt with finely ground granola into her mouth, but she refuses to let Nate see her.   
  
“Blair, I—” Serena starts, but Blair just shakes her head and buries her face in Serena’s golden curls, breathes in sandalwood and patchouli and bites her lip to keep from crying because she knows the tears will sting and she doesn’t want to ruin the one moment the world somehow, finally, feels right-side-up again. Serena offers to stay with her for the night, but Blair isn’t the only one who needs Serena—she’s never the only one who needs Serena—so she sends her best friend off with a smile and the promise that she’ll be fine.   
  
After Serena leaves, she sends Dorota to fetch some movies under the pretense of ennui, but when the door closes, Blair finds herself on unsteady feet to retrieve the compact from her purse. She can’t bring herself to open it; it remains hidden under her pillow long after Dorota arrives.  
  
Louis visits her that night and though Blair doesn’t want him to see her like this and though Dorota tries her best, he manages a foot in the door and he sits beside her bed and holds her hand and tells her that he still wants to be with her, no matter what, and to please look at him because she’s fashioned herself a veil out of a silk handkerchief.  
  
“Please,” he says again, her Prince Charming, and she finally allows him to unveil her, tries hard not to flinch when his hand sweeps the silk away, and she must look hideous, it’s the wrong sort of fairytale where she’s the beast and he will leave, but he smiles and says firmly, “You are beautiful.”  
  
It is the most beautiful lie Blair has ever heard.  
  
He promises to come to her again, but only when she’s ready to see him, only when _she_  wants to see him, and that he will wait however long it takes now that he knows she is all right. He leaves after kissing her on the cheek, but when she touches her face with her hands all she can feel is scabbed skin.  
  
Blair doesn’t believe in fairytales anymore.  
  
She refuses to see Chuck, despite his multiple attempts to contact her and despite his voice echoing throughout the hallways, demanding to the hospital staff that he be let in. Her breath catches in her throat and her teeth clench unbearably tight and her fingers stiffen around the compact under her pillow. She makes it clear that he is not allowed anywhere near her and that whatever he threatens is nothing compared to what she will do if crossed. Still, he comes every day, loud and overbearingly apologetic, refusing to be refused. He leaves only after she finally acquiesces to admit whatever frivolous token he’s brought with him. Flowers, always flowers.   
  
When one of the nurses, so young and so pretty with snow white skin and compassion in her Serena-like eyes, says, “But he seems to love you so much,” Blair replies, coldly, “He is the reason I am here.”  
  
The one face that doesn’t resurface in her life as a common hospital-goer is Daniel Humphrey. He exists only in name, printed on an issue of _The New Yorker_ sent to her room. She wants to call and ask why he would think something so dull would help her get better rather than push her straight over the edge, maybe berate his hair while she’s at it, but she resists the temptation. Still, she reads the issue cover-to-cover.  
  
Eventually, when her room becomes so suffocatingly full of blood red roses, she decides to go home. Dorota has already broken and called Eleanor and Cyrus, who are on their way, and though her mother reprimands her harshly for keeping this a secret, her words are filled with such warmth and love that Blair also breaks and begins to cry.   
  
On the very same day, back in her silk nightdress and satin sheeted bed, she sends Louis back home to Morocco and a princess Blair is so sure is waiting for him: a perfect princess for a perfect prince. Because in the end Blair Cornelia Waldorf is still a romantic and still believes in love and fairytales—just not for her.  
  
Which is why Blair spends the rest of the week holed up in bed with a carton of ice cream, watching her Netflix queue which, suspiciously, comprises of Nova documentaries and _Rosemary’s Baby_. Dorota leaves her room with a knowing look, but though her hand reaches for her phone, it remains hidden safely under the pillow next to her compact.  
  
And just when Rosemary screams, “This is no dream—this is really happening!” there’s a light knock at her door and Dan Humphrey is standing in front of her, mouthing, “They tell me you’ve been bitten by a mouse.”  
  
“What are you doing here?” She tries to appear nonchalant at his sudden intrusion, but one disobedient finger lands on the mute button.   
  
“Heard you were out of the hospital.” He doesn’t move, just leans against her doorframe, hands in his pockets, looking every bit the Brooklyn Bumpkin she’s come to expect.  
  
“From who?”  
  
“Okay, I read it on Gossip Girl.”  
  
“You’ve—been keeping Gossip Girl tabs on me?” Her question is innocent, but her eyes are sharp and they catch the slight twitch of his arm. If only she knew what it meant.  
  
“Is that a pillow case over your mirror?”  
  
“You didn’t answer my question.”  
  
“You didn’t answer mine.” A beat. “Yes, I’ve been keeping Gossip Girl tabs on you.”  
  
“I see.” A beat. “Yes, that  _is_  a pillow case over my mirror.”  
  
“You know that’s not what I was really asking.”  
  
“Well, I’m not a mind reader, Humphrey. It’s not my fault you don’t know how to ask a decent question.”  
  
“May I come in?”  
  
She sniffs and turns the volume back up on her laptop. “If you must.”  
  
He enters cautiously, one step at a time, as if she might leap out and take his head off at any second, and finally seats himself at the foot of her bed.  
  
“I’m not  _contagious_ ,” she huffs. She doesn’t look at him—it’s enough to imagine the incredulity on his face—and after another hesitant pause, she feels the bed dip at her side. He smells faintly earthy. Human. Poor.   
  
“Why didn’t you come sooner?”  
  
“ _Why_  is there a pillowcase over your mirror?”  
  
She furrows her eyebrows at him and he has the nerve to smile. “I didn’t think the Great Blair Waldorf would want to be seen in a common hospital by a lowly Humphrey.”  
  
“You thought right.” The haughty look falls from her face. “Mirrors only tell the truth.”  
  
“Do they tell you you’re beautiful? Because you are, Waldorf.”  
  
Daniel Humphrey is not a prince, is not even a frog, won’t magically become everything she’s ever wanted since she was six or sixteen or even six days ago, and maybe this isn’t where she thought she should be—curled up in her own bed next to him, sharing a single spoon and a carton of ice cream—but he is real and not a dream and she’s had enough of fairytales for a lifetime—or six.  
  
“I know that, Humphrey,” she replies, but instead of reaching for her compact, her disobedient hand finds his.

**Author's Note:**

> It's 2018 and I'm still mad about the Gossip Girl ending lol. Posting this now partly to archive some old writing, partly from nostalgia, but mostly because Dan/Blair is the most used GG relationship tag on AO3 and I want it to stay that way because I’m petty. Also why yes I did tag this Blair/Dan as well because this was the only relationship Blair was ever allowed to put herself first (THEY WERE EQUALS) and Blair/Happiness is all I ever wanted even if she didn’t end up with Dan. (She should have ended up with Dan.)
> 
> Written in 2011 & lightly edited and re-titled because I don’t remember what the original meant.


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